With mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy enhance­ments, more and more busi­ness­es are catch­ing on to the shift­ing cul­ture. Con­cepts such as ad rev­enue, web­site traf­fic, and con­ver­sion rates have become impor­tant sta­ples in the frame­works of for­ward-think­ing busi­ness owners.

Google, with its inno­va­tions, gives us an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to use the free Google Ana­lyt­ics tool to gath­er the most impor­tant infor­ma­tion and eval­u­ate web­site effec­tive­ness, with real-time reports and user behav­iour ana­lyt­ics to track cus­tom con­ver­sions that mat­ter to a par­tic­u­lar busi­ness for a par­tic­u­lar rea­son. Let’s find out what cus­tom con­ver­sions imply and how to set them up correctly.

What are Conversions?

Sim­ply put, the term con­ver­sion in this con­text refers to any action of a vis­i­tor to your web­site due to direct influ­ence by the visit.

The sub­ject vis­i­tor may, for example:

• Com­plete a survey
• Down­load your app
• Com­plete any pur­chase of host­ed goods or services
• Click on CTAs to request a free consultation
• Any oth­er form of per­ti­nent engagement

It is now obvi­ous that track­ing con­ver­sions are a great way to mea­sure your busi­ness suc­cess and make weight­ed deci­sions on push­ing it forward.

How to set up Custom Conversions With Google Analytics

Here’s a step-by-step guide to set up con­ver­sions in your Google Ana­lyt­ics account.

Choose what you want to track

Depend­ing on the nature of your busi­ness, you have to iden­ti­fy your spe­cif­ic goal.  Your goals are unique to you, they are based on the infor­ma­tion you want to know:

• Do peo­ple down­load your app?
• How many peo­ple sign up for your newsletters?
• What per­cent­age of vis­i­tors com­plet­ed purchases?
• Which traf­fic sources led to purchases?
• Which CTAs are being clicked?

Things to remember before you’ve started implementing Conversions on your account

• To enable Goals and Con­ver­sion track­ing, you should have Admin Access to your Google Ana­lyt­ics account.
• We rec­om­mend to set up goals on the Raw View of your web­site, test if every­thing works prop­er­ly, and then apply changes to your “All Web­site Data” View.

Here are the steps of goal creation using Google Analytics:

• Go to the nav­i­ga­tion bar and click ‘Admin.’
• Got to “View’ and click on ‘Goals.’
• Select ‘+New Goal.’
• You will now be able to use the wiz­ard to cre­ate your goal.

1. Setting up Goals

You may choose the Goal types from the tem­plate that includes the most pop­u­lar goals:

• Rev­enue-based goals (mak­ing pay­ment, or appointment)
• Acqui­si­tion-asso­ci­at­ed goals (account creation)
• Enquiries made (get esti­mate, see available)
• Engage­ment (media play)
• Smart goal

If you haven’t found any­thing that suits your needs, you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a cus­tom goal.

• Choose any of the options above and click “Con­tin­ue”

After the ini­tial set­up, you are offered the chance to choose the goal type and apply event con­di­tions.  A con­ver­sion will be count­ed if all of the con­di­tions you set are true when the Event is trig­gered.

2. Build your Tracking URL

To mea­sure the effec­tive­ness of each mar­ket­ing cam­paign sep­a­rate­ly, you may set up a cus­tom URL. In this case, you would use Google’s URL Builder.

• Click the “Sub­mit but­ton” and you will be pre­sent­ed with your unique URL cam­paign track­ing address.
• Copy this address and use it with­in your blog post, adver­tis­ing ban­ners, email cam­paigns, or wher­ev­er else you want, in order to track vis­its from that unique URL.

3. Create and Generate Your Reports

After cre­at­ing your goals and tag­ging your appro­pri­ate URLs, it is time to gen­er­ate your reports.

These reports will help you to make strate­gic deci­sions by pro­vid­ing you with the data that mat­ters to achiev­ing your KPIs.

Here are the steps to generating your customised reports:

• Go to the Nav­i­ga­tion bar and click on ‘Cus­tomi­sa­tion.’
• Select ‘Add New Cus­tom Report.’
• Give your report an appro­pri­ate title.
• Select ‘+ add metric.’
• Choose the met­ric columns that you would like to see in your report.

You must search for the spe­cif­ic goal that you have cre­at­ed and select the appro­pri­ate metric.

You may, for exam­ple, want to see the con­ver­sion rate for pur­chas­es on your plat­form. Just adjust the report to show this type of conversion.

• Select the ‘add dimen­sion’ option.

Cus­tomise the break­down of your report. You can break down the gen­er­at­ed data into rel­e­vant rows.

• Select ‘Save’ and a cus­tom report will be generated.

It will show you what you need to know and allow you to appro­pri­ate­ly mea­sure con­ver­sion performance.

Why tracking conversions matters for business

Analy­sis of con­ver­sions is just as impor­tant as col­lect­ing data from real-world polls or sur­veys. Busi­ness­es need to under­stand how to con­duct them­selves on dig­i­tal plat­forms in order to ful­ly take advan­tage of any pre­sent­ed opportunities.

Every per­son who:

• views your ads
• vis­its your website
• down­loads your app
• or even makes a call to your list­ed phone numbers

…is a poten­tial client. 

That client will speak to oth­er clients and before you know it (if you play your cards right) you will have a cas­cade of busi­ness.

It is impor­tant to use these sim­ple tools to stake your claim in a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­place. Any busi­ness strives for good prof­its and the com­pa­ny’s longevi­ty. Use tools such as Google Ana­lyt­ics to your advan­tage and carve out your mar­ket share. Boost your traf­fic by analysing the data and blend­ing SEO and PPC for bet­ter performance.